The Old Balkan Game

"The optimistic opinion that international tensions are decreasing, " said Tur key's Premier Adnan Menderes in Bel grade last week, "is more of a feeling than a conception based on hard fact." On a four-day state visit to Yugoslavia, the Turk was doing his best to persuade the third partner in the three-ply Balkan pact (Turkey-Greece-Yugoslavia) to forget its dreams of peaceful coexistence with Rus sia and to cast its lot with the Western nations in NATO, as Greece and Turkey have done. In a succession of state banquets, his hosts listened respectfully, protested their deep friendship, but acted as if the Balkan pact was primarily cultural and economic, and implied that to talk of military matters was unseemly.

Four days later, in the biggest bomb shell of news to rock the nation since Communist Tito broke' with Communist Stalin in 1948, the Yugoslav foreign of fice announced the advent of another set of visiting dignitaries. Due in Belgrade within a fortnight are Party Chief Nikita Khrushchev (his name came first), Pre mier Nikolai Bulganin, Trade Expert Anastas Mikoyan, and a passel of lesser Communist sherpas.

Their visit, said Tito's party spokes man, was expected to contribute richly "toward a further relaxation of international tension and the development of peaceful international cooperation upon the basis of equality." Conspicuously ab sent from the guest list: stonefaced Foreign Minister Molotov.

The Yugoslavs took pains to inform the U.S. State Department and the British Foreign Office that the visit would not affect Yugoslavia's "cordial and good relations with the West." But all in all, it was quite a coup for Communism's No. i renegade: never before had Headman Khrushchev traveled beyond the border of Kremlin-styled Communism. Tito was probably too cagey to put his head all the way into the bear's mouth. But at the very least, he seemed to be very busy at the old Balkan game of playing off major powers, in hope of picking up an extra concession or two from both sides.

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